Downstairs in the kitchen, Tom poured boiling water onto the leaves in the teapot. Popping on the lid he left it to brew. Pascal liked his tea to have body. He slipped two slices of bread into the toaster and then opened the kitchen door. Leaning against the frame he viewed the long back garden with pleasure, inhaling the mixed scent of lemon thyme, cologne mint and lavender coming from the herb border closest to the kitchen. The perfume returned memories of Eleanor.
He used to help her pick the herbs. She would dry and package them to sell as potpourri in the garden centre. She had taught him their names and the properties associated with them, such as how rosemary was a symbol of love for those who had passed on. It represented a promise not to forget the impact they’d had on your life and the memories shared with them.
He had known next to nothing about nature before going to work for Pascal and Eleanor. He had lived in a run down tenement block. It was a place of discouraging concrete with urine soaked corners. The only colour came from graffiti sprayed on the walls. To escape he went for long solitary walks, wandering far and wide into more attractive areas. It was how he discovered the garden centre. He had applied for the Saturday job on impulse, not believing for a second that the tall, keen eyed man with a shock of blond hair would take him on, but he did.
The garden centre became his refuge. It was a place of calm sanctuary he couldn’t wait to get to each week. His own home was hell on earth. His parents were locked in a downward spiral of drug and alcohol dependency, which left little room for anything else, including him. His paternal grandmother had cared for him more than his parents, but she died when Tom was five. From then on he had dragged himself up, often resorting to scavenging in neighbours’ bins when his parents failed to remember to feed him.
A few weeks short of his fifteenth birthday he had returned home from school to find that his father, who was already drunk, had finally gotten wind of the little job he’d been keeping secret. He had ransacked his bedroom in search of money or things to sell to buy heroin. He didn’t find money, but he did find a cache of sketches. Tom had drawn them as a means of exploring a growing awareness of his sexuality.
The man who drank away the family income and who bought drugs instead of food and clothes for his only child suddenly discovered a sense of morality. It was outraged by his son’s homosexuality.
Tom had regained consciousness to find he was lying on a pyre of sour bedding and torn paper with his father dousing him in lighter fuel. Somehow, he had no real recollection of the logistics involved, he had managed to get out of the room and out of the filthy flat before he was burned alive.
He headed for the only place of safety he knew, the garden centre. It was late. Pascal was closing up. Tom collapsed into his arms. His life changed from that moment on.
Pascal and Eleanor took him into their home. They gave him a room, food, clothes and something he had rarely known, love and care. His sexuality was no issue. Eleanor’s cousin Marcus was gay. He and his partner Ian were close friends with both Eleanor and Pascal.
Tom folded his arms tight across his chest. He’d found the deaths of Eleanor and Marcus difficult to deal with, particularly Eleanor’s. She had been like a mother to him, a warm, kind and deeply intuitive woman.
When Tom was sixteen he went through a phase of imagining he was in love with Pascal. His feelings frightened and confused him. They felt wrong on so many levels. He withdrew into himself, hiding away in his room to avoid contact. Eleanor somehow knew. She had gently broached the subject with him. He had broken down into tears as he tried to explain his feelings, apologizing for them.
She had soothed him, saying they were natural in the circumstances and nothing to fret over or feel guilty about. Pascal had been the first man to show Tom kindness and affection. She said Tom was at an age when emotions were hard to distinguish one from another. The feelings he had for Pascal were a mix of gratitude and the kind of love a son felt for a father.
Afterwards Pascal had come to Tom’s room. Sitting beside him he had slipped an arm around his shoulders, saying kindly, ‘talk to me, my boy, you’ve been all too quiet of late. Papa doesn’t like it when you’re quiet and sad. He misses your smiles.’
The words had further clarified Tom’s feelings for Pascal and put their relationship into context. He had turned into his arms and sobbed. Pascal had stroked his hair and comforted him, as a father comforts his child. In the years that followed whenever Pascal knew Tom was upset or struggling with life he would hold out his arms and say: ‘come to me, come to your papa. Tell me your troubles, mijn jongen.’
The summer garden was suddenly submerged in water, wavering out of focus. Tom utilised a shirtsleeve once again. Eleanor was gone and soon Pascal would join her. He really believed he would be reunited with his wife after his death. He had an extraordinary faith in God and yet he had not set foot in a church for decades. Sitting on a wooden pew every Sunday might make a man religious, he said, but it didn’t necessarily make him good or just.
In Pascal’s view, religion and God were totally different things. God was to be found in open places and open minds, not in closed buildings and the pages of a printed book. Not even Eleanor’s death had dented his faith. Bad things happened to good people. It was the nature of life. It served no purpose to try and name God as villain.
The toast popped from the toaster bringing Tom’s thoughts back to present considerations. Closing the kitchen door he went to pour the tea.